Climate protection and international policy: the Rio-conference between global responsability and national interests

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC) took up work in February 1991 on the basis of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations in the year 1989. The results of the negotiation process were approved at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), in the form of a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). This paper analyzes the climate policy of 24 states or groups of states. In order to structure the interests in the climate issue area, the theorem of the 'environmental policy interest triangle' is here referred to: environmental policy agents are described in relation to the environmental pollution process and an interest distribution pattern is thus obtained. This relation of interests between agents comprises the conflictive originator or polluter and affected interests as well as the intervening helper interests. In a theoretical discussion, typical contents will first be allocated to all three interests in order to determine the presence and influence of these interests and of other factors on the climate policy of the states under investigation as revealed by the INC discussions. The other variables influencing climate policy, i. e. structural (capability of action) and specific (political, economic, constitutional etc.) variables, are also included in the analysis. Based on such a structuring of interests within and above all between the states, proposals will be made to build up an effective and dynamic climate regime, capable of consensus, and the foreseeable limits of climate protection policy will be defined against the background of results from other negotiation processes and environmental protection agreements